Book on Genocide Wins Award

A lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) received the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in nonfiction last week for a scorching exposé on what she sees as the United States’ reluctance to step in to stop genocide.

Samantha Power, who founded KSG’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, condemns the U.S. in her book, A Problem from Hell, for not intervening to help victims of genocide throughout the 20th century.

“I only hope this award can draw attention to the book at a time when it is urgent and essential that we take a hard look at America and its behavior and role in the world,” Power said in a KSG press release.

Power, a native of Ireland who was once a war correspondent in the former Yugoslavia, writes in her book that the U.S. has been negligent in both intervening in cases of genocide and speaking out against the perpetrators.

“The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred,” Power writes in the book.

In the book—which was published in February 2002—Power uses declassified government documents and interviews with many American policymakers to argue that U.S. leaders’ apathy to genocide overseas results from a lack of pressure on them to intervene.

“No U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to [genocide’s] occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on,” she writes in the book.

Director of the Carr Center Michael Ignatieff said he is thrilled that Power has brought attention to the center’s work on improving human rights policy.

“I am proud that Samantha has got the recognition she deserves for this book, because it helps fulfill the Carr Center’s mandate, which is to think about the worst human rights abuses, how to respond to them, and why we so often fail to do so,” Ignatieff wrote in an e-mail.

Executive Director of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies Jaqueline Bhabha said she was pleased with her colleague’s achievement.

“I think it’s a terrific award and I think it’s well-deserved,” she said. “She’s written an extraordinary book.”